Better Situational Awareness in AR-HRC? A Comparative Study of Augmented Reality and Mobile Interfaces for Human-Robot Collaboration

2026-09-01

AI Summary

研究通过比较AR与移动界面在人机协作中的表现，使用SAGAT和眼动追踪评估了不同层级的情境意识，发现AR提高了对机器人的感知级意识但未提升环境意识。

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) facilitates human-robot collaboration (HRC) by enabling in-situ spatial visualizations of the robot and the joint task. However, in safety-critical HRC scenarios such as search-and-rescue, spatial visualizations may also reshape visual attention in ways that create competing situational awareness (SA) demands, potentially introducing new safety concerns. While prior AR-HRC work suggests potential benefits for SA, rigorous evaluations that jointly consider robot and environmental awareness across multiple levels of SA remain limited. We address this through a between-subjects study with 30 participants comparing custom AR and mobile interfaces presenting equivalent information, measuring robot and environmental SA with the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) across all three levels, with concurrent eye tracking to identify the attentional mechanisms underlying any SA differences. Both interfaces achieved high usability; relative to the mobile baseline, AR improved perception-level awareness of the robot but yielded no gains in higher-level robot awareness or in environmental awareness at any level. Gaze analysis explained this: AR freed attention from the map, but that attention was re-invested in the conformal visuals rather than the physical environment. Freeing the eyes from a screen is not the same as directing them to the world, a distinction AR interfaces for safety-critical HRC must design around.

Problem

• Augmented Reality
• Human-Robot Collaboration
• Situational Awareness
• Safety-Critical Scenarios

Innovation

• Augmented Reality
• Human-Robot Collaboration
• Situational Awareness
• Attentional Mechanisms
• Safety-Critical